Damascus, CNN, George Pell: Your Morning Briefing

• Phone calls with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and President Xi Jinping of China are on President Trump’s agenda in these hours. The White House did not disclose the topic, but North Korea’s nuclear program concerns all three.

“It is a sad day when the president of the United States encourages violence against reporters,” a CNN statement said.

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CreditZiya Koseoglu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• A series of car bombskilled 21 people in Damascus, the Syrian capital, highlighting security gaps in parts of the country controlled by President Bashar al-Assad.

In neighboring Turkey, our reporter is on Highway E-5, following a long march of protest against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s widening crackdown on dissent. Hundreds of people, including roughly 30 opposition lawmakers, left Ankara, the capital, on June 15, and expect to reach Istanbul next Sunday.

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• “I hope that everyone will speak up and fight, overcome their own fears to build a better country.”

Almost 45 million Vietnamese, nearly half the population, uses Facebook.

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CreditWilliam West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

• Our Australia bureau chief examines how Cardinal George Pell, the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged with sexual offenses, rose to power despite being trailed by a cloud of scandal.

He also examines the often fused interests of church and state in Australia, where religious schools receive billions of dollars from the government.

Cardinal Pell, 76, is expected at a hearing in Melbourne on July 26.

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CreditSimone Huits

• South Korea, once a leading source of children put up for adoption abroad, now offers the most visible example of a major flaw in the system.

Before 2000, the U.S. did not automatically grant citizenship to foreign adoptees, and some who have been convicted of crimes have been deported to birth countries they left decades ago.

The South Korean pictured above, who was adopted at age 8 by an American family, was sent to Seoul in 2012 with no language skills or contacts. He killed himself last month.

• A yearlong relationship contract might sound bloodless, but it can help surface and protect each person’s priorities. Happily, it’s renewable.

Noteworthy

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CreditBen C. Solomon/The New York Times

• “Checkout time, for the living and the dead, is usually no later than 3 p.m.” Visit a Japanese “itai hoteru,” or corpse hotel, which offers funereal hospitality for families and temporary storage for bodies.

She and her navigator disappeared on July 2, 1937, as Earhart was trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe.

We promise to keep you posted if the searchers turn up anything. But meanwhile, we wondered: Who finally did become the first woman to fly around the world?

In 1948, 24-year-old Richarda Morrow-Tait of Britain took off from Croydon, now a borough of London, in a single-engine Percival Proctor, with Michael Townsend, a Cambridge graduate student, as navigator. They returned a year and one day later, mission completed.

The first woman to make the trek solo was Geraldine Mock, who as a girl in Ohio had been fascinated by Earhart.

In 1964, at age 38, Ms. Mock, above, took off in the Spirit of Columbus, a 1953 single-engine Cessna 180, from Columbus.

The flight wasn’t without complications, including a burning antenna and a mistaken landing at a secret military airstrip in Cairo.

But after 29 days and 23,103 miles, the self-proclaimed “flying housewife” and mother of three returned home a record-holder.